


Fall On Me

by coloursflyaway



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 06:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19193686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: In the first autumn after the world hasn't ended, there's a car ride, a picnic and finally, the wordforever.





	Fall On Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jawsyjaws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jawsyjaws/gifts).



Occasionally, Crowley still thinks of Alpha Centauri.  
Although, no, it’s hardly enough to be classified a thought, more the hint of one, the notional equivalent of picking up just a little bit of another radio station while listening to music. Not because there isn’t enough to think about, not even because he doesn’t want to, but because he absolutely forbids himself to do anything more.  
He’d forbid himself from thinking about it entirely, but unfortunately his brain is not like his house plants and cannot be frightened into submission. Crowley knows this because he has tried. Several times.

So, he still occasionally thinks of Alpha Centauri. They’re not the clearest thoughts he has ever had, because all of those had come from a healthy mix of not sleeping and three hundred quid’s worth of cocaine pumping through his bloodstream, they’re more of the fuzzy and shapeless kind that leaves you a bit disoriented afterwards.  
Their topics include, but are not limited to:

  * the vast nothingness of space
  * the lack of gravity
  * Aziraphale
  * the problem of deciding on which of the twin stars to settle on
  * the possibility of solar flares feeling ticklish
  * Aziraphale
  * the new and exciting possibilities of inhabiting a new solar system
  * Aziraphale



Some of them, like wondering if he would be able to taste the magnetic activity of his new home, are relatively comforting thoughts, while others are quite the opposite. Anything, that is, that has to do with a certain angel.  
And of course, it is those thoughts which take up the vast majority of the time he spends thinking about Alpha Centauri; it’s all light blonde hair and soft wrinkles that make gentle eyes look gentler, cream-coloured suits and smiles so bright that Crowley thinks he might remember Heaven for a moment.  
What makes it more difficult is that it is so easy, impossibly easy, one might say, to go from there to, well. Alpha Centauri. And how it could have been if they had let the Earth implode, run away together and made a new life there. Maybe without books, without wine and without his Bentley, but with each other and with an eternity to spend.

The thought, even if is just fleeting, a minor ripple in the dark, menacing sea that is Crowley’s mind, is enough to make something bloom in his chest that is decidedly undemonic, something warm and soft and bright, something that is as old as it is new, and as beautiful as it is torturous.  
He knows what it is, has known it for at least four thousand years, which is the precise reason why the Feeling has remained nameless, even if it is stubbornly clinging to the door in Crowley’s mind through which he is continuously trying to push it.

It’s the Feeling which is making Crowley think of Alpha Centauri now too, because he can feel the first tendrils of it spreading in his chest, just waiting for a crack in his vigilance to strangle him. He won’t let it, he decides, while he watches Aziraphale pop another biscuit into his mouth, humming like it’s the best thing he has ever tasted when Crowley knows for a fact that he got them for ninety-nine pence at Tesco half an hour ago.  
But there is something endearing about it, the way Aziraphale’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, the corners of his lips turn up ever so slightly, how he throws another biscuit at a duck, hitting it square in the face, and how he looks at it with slight regret, because he won’t get to eat it.  
The biscuit, that is.

“So?”, Crowley prompts, before he can think of something stupid, like wonder if Aziraphale’s eyes would look differently in another sun’s light.  
“Hm?” Aziraphale looks over to him, his face such a perfect picture of innocence that Crowley can’t be anything but suspicious.  
“The thing. The thing that you wanted to talk about. That you didn’t want to discuss on the phone.”  
It could be literally anything, from a new cat that the angel had spotted hanging around the book shop to another bout of the Apocalypse, the this-time-actual end of the world, time, and everything Crowley has ever held dear, so he had decided very early on that he would not worry about it.  
Only that _deciding_ something and actually _doing_ it seems to be mutually exclusive.  
“Oh. Right. Yes.”

Aziraphale straightens almost imperceptibly, going weirdly still, and the danger scale in Crowley’s mind is suddenly tipped violently towards _BAD_.    
“It is hardly anything, really”, Aziraphale says softly, looking stubbornly down at his biscuits, and the scale tips further. “A trifle, really. Just something that we, well, not discussed, but something that was mentioned.”  
Crowley waits for a few seconds if the angel intends to say anything else, but when nothing comes, he prompts, “Yes?”  
Not really because he wants to know that badly, but because he doesn’t want to give the building anxiety any more room in his mind than it has annexed already.

“Yes. Well. If you perchance remember, I think it was in the seventies, or maybe the late sixties, now that I think of it, I had brought you the holy water, and you…” Again, Aziraphale doesn’t finish the sentence, instead his voice goes softer, softer, until it’s gone; Crowley remembers the evening more than clearly, the heist and the hope and the heartbreak. “What I am trying to say, back then we talked about having ourselves a little picknick at some point. And since the world doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon I figured, why not do that now? As long as we still have time.”

Crowley, just a few weeks ago, has stopped time himself, and yet Aziraphale seems to be able to do the same thing, because the Earth most definitely stops, everyone around them stops, and Crowley’s relatively useless heart? Oh, it stops the hardest of all.

Because he knows what that moment meant to him, that one second in which he thought that maybe they were on the same page after all, because he knows what he wants this to mean, because… because he knows it can’t be that.  
He takes a deep breath, and squashes what could be hope blossoming in his chest like he has done with a dozen ants on the way here.

“…yeah”, he answers Aziraphale what would have been several seconds too late, had time not stopped in between to give his heart the chance to break.  Another deep breath, since it almost feels like he needs twice as much air to speak even a single word right now. “Sure. Anywhere special you want to go to?”  
“No.” Finally Aziraphale looks up, smiling so brightly it hurts Crawley’s eyes even with his sunglasses on; as much as he hates it, he can feel his heart mending in his chest. “Wherever you want to go, dear boy.”

 

They agree on meeting on Tuesday, because Tuesday seems like the right day to choose, and as always Crowley picks Aziraphale up at his book store.  
He looks… _different_.  
Crowley cannot pinpoint why, or how, because Aziraphale is wearing the same too proper clothes, his hair tousled, a picknick basket in one of his hands, but there is something just _off_ about him, like something has changed without Crowley noticing.  
The thought is vaguely disconcerting.

Crowley doesn’t bother getting out, just waits until Aziraphale gets into the car; like always the world seems a little bit brighter as soon as he’s near.  
“Mornin’, angel”, he greets, and Aziraphale gives him a smile that also isn’t quite right, but too close to it for Crowley to say anything.  
“Does this really still count as morning?”, Aziraphale asks instead of answers, “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it? I suppose it could count as a very late morning, if you insist, even if I would definitely say it’s closer to midday.”  
“I don’t insist on anything.”

It’s impossible to keep the amusement from his voice, and Aziraphale must notice it, because he flashes Crowley another smile; this time it feels real.  
“In that case, good midday to you to. Have you decided where we’ll go by now?”  
“Absolutely not.” He flashes Aziraphale a toothy grin and starts the car to go wherever it wants to take them.  
“Just as well.” The angel looks away from Crowley, out of the window to watch London’s streets pass them by, every molecule of his earthly body radiating contentment, and there is something about this too, Crowley thinks as he almost runs over a very small woman and her even smaller dog.  
It’s almost like something clicked in place, some part of Aziraphale’s brain that used to tick, or click or move in another rather infuriating way, and which now has found the one place it fits in and made it its home.

“Maybe somewhere green would be nice”, Aziraphale says slowly, every word crisp and clear in the warm air, “Proper green, I mean. Not the way a park is, more like the countryside. Green and… peaceful. Yes. I think that would do nicely. What do you say?”

What Crowley wants to say is something close to the lines of this: _I have absolutely no preference when it comes to this, because I haven’t cared less about anything in the last century than I care about picknicks, but I would willingly walk through the Pearly Gates of Heaven with you if it meant we spent more time with each other._

What Crowley says, however, is this: “Sounds good enough to me.”  
Which doesn’t quite hold the same emotional gravity.

“Splendid”, Aziraphale answers nonetheless, absolutely oblivious and lets one of his hands drop down from the wicker basket he is balancing on his lap, despite Crowley, like always, driving at a speed that would make some tornados dreadfully jealous.  
The hand lands in the most inopportune places it could, at least from Crowley’s perspective, which is between them, palm turned towards the sky and fingers stretched out just enough that the tips brush against Crowley’s thighs every so often. It’s the perfect position for someone to take it, hold it tightly, maybe even wave their fingers together to feel the thrum of blood beneath Aziraphale’s skin.

Even taking in account the one time his entire car was on fire, it’s still the worst drive of Crowley’s life.

 

They arrive… well, they arrive somewhere. Not that the _where_ part matters much to Crowley, he just stops the car when Aziraphale next to him mutters something like, “Don’t you think that this looks nice?”  
In Crowley’s opinion it really doesn’t. It’s essentially a field, very green and kind of soggy, complete with a few stubborn bushes that have yet to get the memo about agriculture and an unenthusiastic crow picking at an invisible object that might, or might not, be food. It’s as boring as the English countryside can get, but Aziraphale smiles at the crow like it’s the most magical of God’s creations and transforms the entire scene into something worthwhile.

So they get out of the car, Aziraphale still holding tightly onto his basket, Crowley’s thigh burning with the residual angelic touch; when the angel has found a slightly less soggy spot, they spread the chequered blanket on the ground and when they sit, Aziraphale is just a little too close.  
He must not notice how their knees touch, but Crowley does.

Deft fingers pull plate after box after platter from the basket, fresh strawberries and little sandwiches, scones and clotted cream and a tiny jar of jam, slices of cold meat and three different kinds of bread rolls, and as a triumphant finale an entire chocolate covered cake.  
Crowley can’t do anything but watch, both surprised at the amount of food and surprised that he’s even surprised.  
“Angel, how long do you intend to stay here? A fortnight?”, he asks, the surprise firmly refusing to leave his voice just yet. Aziraphale’s ears turn slightly pink.

“I, er, I couldn’t decide. You see, you never told me what you wanted to eat, so I just. Brought everything.” His voice is smaller than usual, but his eyes are still bright when he looks up at Crowley through his lashes, who promptly forgets how to be snarky for the first time since his creation.  
“That’s – “, he starts, then chokes on the words he couldn’t think of anyway, because Aziraphale gently lays his hand on Crowley’s knee. It’s the smallest of touches, and yet Crowley can feel the warmth he hasn’t possessed for centuries burn through the fabric of his jeans, heating up his skin.  
“Nice”, he finishes lamely, at least several moments too late, hoping that his glasses are dark enough to conceal the fact that his eyes are glued on Aziraphale’s perfectly manicured fingers on his knee, stretching out to touch his thigh.

 “That’s because I am an angel, dear, it’s what we’re meant to do”, Aziraphale says easily, no change in his tone of voice. His other hand is picking up one of the tiny sandwiches like he isn’t aware that he has just launched Crowley’s mind into space, more accurately 4,37 light years away to Alpha Centauri, where it is plucking the fantasy of the life they could possibly have had right from the gaseous surface and transporting it here. To this field, this moment, this eternity.  
It’s impossible, and yet this time, Crowley doesn’t manage to squash the hope completely before it can bloom in his chest.

It’ll hurt like a bitch when Aziraphale eventually breaks his heart again.

Fingers tightening around his thigh bring Crowley back to Earth entirely, to Aziraphale smiling at him with eyes that should not be allowed to look so kind.  
“You should try one of the scones”, he tells Crowley brightly, “I picked them up at this charming little store in Edinburgh in the morning, they’re absolutely scrumptious.”

The scone is halfway to his mouth when Crowley really, truly realises what Aziraphale has said, isn’t just taking an order. It makes him pause, hand raised and mouth hanging open before forming the first string of passably sensible words since they sat down.  
“You went to Edinburgh for scones?”

This time, it’s not just Aziraphale’s ears that turn pink, it’s the tip of his nose and the apples of his cheeks too, leaving Crowley with the very demonic urge to just eat him whole.  
“I might have”, Aziraphale admits, sounding bashful. “But I was there anyway to pick up the jam, so it really wasn’t much of a bother.”  
“…the jam.” A moment passes with Crowley just trying to understand what is being said, but then again, this is the angel he had to break out of prison because of crepes. The thought passes, quicker than expected, because another pushes and pulls until it can take its place. “Where are the strawberries from?”

The blush dusted across Aziraphale’s face grows deeper in shade, and Crowley cannot be absolutely certain of the answer, because it is mumbled into the rest of the sandwich the angel is stuffing into his mouth.  
“Trondheim.”  
“The cake?”  
“This lovely café in Vienna, really charming, you’d love the décor-“  
“What about the sandwiches?”  
“Oh.” For the first time, no colour changes on Aziraphale’s face, instead he looks vaguely pleased, which only makes Crowley more suspicious. “Those I made myself. I even cut off the crusts, see?”

Aziraphale holds up one of the little crust-less triangles for Crowley to see, a grave mistake.  
“That salmon is not from Sainsbury’s though, is it?”  
“It could be”, Aziraphale answers, telling Crowley that it absolutely isn’t. “There is absolutely no reason to think it isn’t from a local supermarket and instead from… from a small shop in Cordova, Alaska.”  
His voice grows more strained with every word he’s saying, and Crowley can’t help but chuckle.

“Really, angel”, he says without any malice, but a lot of amusement. “I always knew you were crazy about food, but –“  
He doesn’t get to finish, because Aziraphale interrupts him, words flying from his mouth in a way that reminds Crowley of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  
“I’m not. Crazy about food I mean. I mean, I am, but that’s not – it isn’t what this is all about, it’s not – “Aziraphale pauses, and something changes in his posture, or maybe the slant of his mouth, or maybe the intensity of his gaze. Whatever it is, it steadies the angel’s voice when he finally finishes his sentence. “None of this was for me.”

It doesn’t make much sense.  
“Who’s it for, then?”, Crowley asks, stealing the sandwich from between the angel’s fingers and stuffing the whole thing into his mouth.  
Over the past millennia, Crowley thought he had seen every possible facial expression on Aziraphale, but he’s proven wrong right here, in the English country side, because never before in all of creation has a creature looked upon another with such utter incredulity painted across his face.  
“Crowley”, Aziraphale says, sounding as stunned as he looks, almost desperate.  
Crowley chokes on his sandwich.

“What?”, he gasps out once he can speak again, having miracled the sandwich from his tracheae to Alpha Centauri, the first place he could think of. His voice is hoarse nonetheless, but it doesn’t matter, since he can hardly form more than one word. “ _What_?”  
“I thought it was obvious!” Aziraphale is flailing, hands flapping through the warm summer air. “It’s what we discussed! A picknick, or a dinner at the Ritz, and since you didn’t do anything when we _were_ at the Ritz, I thought – “  
“I didn’t do anything?” Crowley interrupts him, sounding at least as scandalised as he feels. “I did everything! All the time! I asked you to run away with me to Alpha Centauri!”  
“Well. Yes.” Aziraphale huffs slightly, crossing his arms in front of his body. “I guess we both can agree that wasn’t your best idea.”

They can, but Crowley cannot admit that right now, especially not when his heart is finally starting to realise what exactly they are bickering about.  
It’s not a sudden thing, realising, it’s more like making a good cup of tea in the morning, letting the tea bag steep just the perfect amount of time, adding milk or sugar or in Crowley’s case, nothing at all. Realising takes time, time which he, after 6000 years, more than deserves.  
At first, it doesn’t feel like much at all, maybe like a small fit of cardiac arrest, but the sensation grows stronger, his heart seemingly sucking in blood without pumping it back into his system, growing wider, fuller, heavier. Warmer, too.  
It seizes up, like it wishes it could explode, and Crowley thinks, for the first time without panic clinging to the words, _Oh shit, he knows_.

He must know, maybe not quite the extent, or the amount of time, or the sheer mind-numbing pain of it, but Aziraphale _knows_ , and not only that, he doesn’t mind.  
In fact, it seems that – and Crowley’s heart suddenly releases the blood it has been hoarding all at once, filling every vein, every vessel with warm, tingling knowledge – Aziraphale might reciprocate.  
An impossible thought, and yet there is a hand on Crowley’s knee still, there are the angel’s eyes on him, unwaveringly kind, unfailingly loving.

His heart beats another time, and the warmth is almost unbearable, the intensity, the brilliance of the feeling enough to make Crowley forget how to breathe for a solid minute, if not longer.  
After such a long time, he can’t quite recall what it was like to gaze at God, but he thinks it must have felt something close to this.

Crowley is almost done with realising, the tea close to finish steeping, but there is still something missing, there is still the need to hear Aziraphale say it out-loud and make it real.  
“You mean…?”, he croaks out, because he has quite forgotten how to speak, but it’s enough for the angel to understand.  
“I suppose you could say that I finally caught up to your speed.”

Up until now, Crowley would have said he knew every single of Aziraphale’s smiles by heart, but this moment proves him wrong; the corners of the angel’s mouth pull up in a way he has never seen before, a curve of lips that makes Crowley’s heart shine brighter than all stars of Alpha Centauri combined.  
It’s a small smile, a kind one, but most importantly one that tells its audience that the person wearing it harbours not a single trace of doubt in their mind. And it’s directed at _him_.

A small part of Crowley still wants to ask _Are you sure?_ but he doesn’t, because he _knows_. He knows with an intensity that makes it feel like he has never known anything in his life before, like all dogmatic principles of Heaven and Hell could only pale in comparison to the certainty of Aziraphale’s hand squeezing his knee, his eyes filled with an amount of love that should have to be enough for the entire Earth, not just one single entity on it.

“Alright”, Crowley says instead, mostly because he isn’t quite sure what to say, can’t think about it with Aziraphale looking at him like that. In all his life, Crowley never really understood the concept of physical beauty, at least not until now.  
Because now he can’t even think of tearing his eyes from the angel’s face, committing every groove, every slope and curve of it to memory once more, can’t imagine anything he’d rather look at for the rest of eternity. Aziraphale is beautiful, maybe not for human standards, maybe not even angelic ones, but he’s the most beautiful thing in all of existence in Crowley’s eyes.

Something starts to grow next, maybe inside, the Feeling inside his chest, something that feels more longing, maybe a little bit hotter still, a yearning, a hunger, something that is inextricably connected to this human body he is inhabiting. It isn’t lust, but at the same time not terribly far removed from it, a craving which informs Crowley in no uncertain terms that it will not go anywhere unless it is satisfied.

A moment passes until Crowley realises what it is his mortal body wants; when he does, he’s, well. Surprised. He’s seen humans do it before, but never has been terribly impressed with the concept.  
All in all, it seems relatively pointless, wet and possibly unsanitary, and yet his gaze flickers down to Aziraphale’s lips, which look plush and soft and impossibly inviting.  
Like they would feel perfect pressed against any patch of Crowley’s skin, most of all against his own mouth.

Maybe it’s because he never expected to be in this position that Crowley never considered how it would be to _kiss_ Aziraphale, but the second the thought appears in his mind it overtakes it completely, leaves Crowley breathless with want. He looks down on Aziraphale’s hand on his leg, then slowly, ever so slowly, covers it with his own.  
Aziraphale’s skin is warm, soft, doesn’t feel angelic but human, and suddenly, it’s the simplest thing in the world to lean in.

Their lips meet in the middle, since apparently Crowley wasn’t the only one thinking about it, and it’s with the first touch that his eyes flutter shut, almost an involuntary response.  
It’s a soft kiss, a chaste one, a perfect kiss to be the first of a million.

Beneath Crowley’s hand Aziraphale turns his own around, weaves their fingers together and holds onto Crowley’s hand like it’s the only thing that is keeping him from sinking. And Crowley, lips parting easily to deepen the kiss, eager to take every little ounce of love Aziraphale is willing to give, seconds the sentiment.

They break apart at some point, and it’s only because their surroundings haven’t changed significantly that Crowley knows that they haven’t spent a century kissing. Still, it feels like it could have been that long, because everything has changed.  
Not the world, but then again, the world was never that significant; the sun isn’t brighter, but he is, and looking at Aziraphale, the angel is, too.

“So”, Crowley says after another moment-slash-eternity, “This is happening now, right? I mean, for a longer amount of time. I mean, for-“  
He stops, cannot say it, cannot even _think_ it. Even if it seems like a lifetime away since he thought it impossible altogether, it still hasn’t been long enough to truly wrap his head around the concept.  
Aziraphale seems to know, for once takes the plunge so Crowley won’t have to.  
His eyes are glittering with the sunshine of an early autumn day and his own celestial light as he takes their intertwined hands and raises them up to his lips, presses a kiss to each of Crowley’s knuckles, just as sweet as their first one was.  
And his voice is almost as soft when he, lips still grazing Crowley’s skin, says, "Yes, dear, I think forever would be quite the right word for it."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, you _know_ that their first kiss didn't just last five minute, there were at least five full days of snogging in which they weirded out several cars full of people. 
> 
> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)


End file.
